Sika deer are rampant, and a Japanese school plans to open a hunting discipline

Source: Global Times

Infographic. Image source: Visual China

Due to the flood of sika deer, which has caused harm to local agriculture and forest ecology, a school in the Izu area of Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, plans to open a hunting discipline to control the number of sika deer.

Japan's "Asahi Shimbun" recently reported that the preparation of the opening of hunting disciplines is a zoo college in Kawazu Town, Shizuoka Prefecture. The university plans to offer a one-year course of hunting to teach students the legal knowledge related to hunting and hunting methods. The teachers of this course will be professional hunters, members of the Hunters' Association, and field drills will be conducted in the Izu Mountains. In addition, there are meat processing facilities in the school, which can teach students how to cook venison deliciously.

According to the Shizuoka Prefectural Government Nature Conservation Division, by spring 2021, there will be about 25,000 sika deer in the Izu region, which will nibble on grass roots and bark, causing environmental problems such as soil erosion and causing damage to surrounding crops. In order to maintain the balance of the ecosystem, the number of sika deer in the Izu area should be maintained at about 5,000. In 2019, about 12,500 sika deer were captured locally, but it was still unable to keep up with the growth rate of the deer herd, so it was necessary to expand the hunting scale, and the aging of the local hunter group was becoming more and more serious, and it was facing the crisis of no successor. (Fang Qing)